Where their heroes the Clash channeled a surge of creativity into 1980's eclectic, sprawling triple album Sandinista!, Green Day's new trilogy of single albums – ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! – will arrive at two-month intervals. This opening salvo sees the Californians moving away from concept albums such as 2004's antiwar American Idiot and returning to their ramalama punk roots. The influence of the the Clash, the Sex Pistols and the Damned is channeled into songs which never outstay their welcome, have choruses which sound like you've known them all your life, and oodles of energy. The best of them – the bubblegum pop thrill of Fell for You, or pop funk Kill the DJ, which echoes the "Hang the DJ" call in the Smiths' Panic – arrive like melodic slaps around the face. The pace doesn't vary and the recent social commentary has given way to more teenage concerns, but references to "running out of time" and being "too young to die" suggest a growing obsession with mortality. Thus, pushing 40, the spiky threesome have made a very decent fist of sounding like their twentysomething selves.

• This article was amended on 21 September 2012. The original said that Sandinista! was released in 1979 and American Idiot in 2001, rather than 1980 and 2004 respectively. This has been corrected.